Monday, January 30, 2023

Puzzle #199: Shoddy Work (variety cryptic)

Today's puzzle is a variety cryptic (pdf, puz, pdf solution)! I think it's a fairly gentle one, with a good number of straightforward clues (relatively, anyway - variety cryptics are rarely easy), so if you're intimidated by tough VCs, why not give this one a try? Many thanks to Hayley and Steve for testing.

Instructions:

It turns out hiring unlicensed contractors to build this grid for me was a mistake. At a number of intersections, they chose Across and Down entries that have incompatible letters, and instead of fixing them, they just left the pesky squares blank. Luckily, they left the discarded Across letters lying around, so once you've finished solving the puzzle, you can place those same letters in the blank spaces in a different order so that the resulting Across and Down entries are all ordinary English words. In the original grid order, those Across letters will spell out a description of the contractors' work, and in the new grid order, they will spell out a description of your work.

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